PM Skerrit says ‘significant progress’ made one year after Maria

(Dominica News Online) One year after Hurricane Maria devastated Dominica, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has said the island has made significant progress in recovering.

In an interview with state-owned DBS Radio, Skerrit said the island’s recovery is on course.

“I think, all things considered, we have made considerable progress,” he stated. “We have been able to get back all our schools functional, we have been able to get electricity and water back to every community in the country, we have been able to help thousands of citizens have their homes recovered and repaired. We have signed contracts for several hundreds of housing units, some of them have been constructed or are under construction.”

He stated that consideration has to be taken that drawings for the units had to be done, private lands had to be acquired and in some surveys had to be made.

“We were able to all of those things in a quick period of time to get work started and many parts of the country we have been able to build homes for citizens and there are many homes under construction,” he stated.

The Prime Minister said the country’s agricultural sector is back in full gear.

“We are exporting agricultural produce to our various markets,” he said. “Business activity in Dominica is largely back to normal, so one can say there has been tremendous progress and we have been able to mobilize the international and regional community to our assistance and there are commitments to significant sums of funds to assist in building the world’s first climate resilient nation.”

Read more at: Dominica News Online